Ben Boychuk of City Journal California and the Sacramento Bee will talk about how the Democrats in the California state legislature are working to undermine the initiative process that has kept government excesses in check for the past century. He’ll also talk about California’s efforts to undermine the Second Amendment.

We’ll have Chuck Michael from the CA Pistol and Rifle Association and the CA Chapter of the National Rifle Association NRA, join us on the latest developments in the State’s efforts to disarm citizens or make it so expensive that only the rich can afford to have guns and protection.

Wednesday, Feb 13, LIVE on CRN1 from Noon-2:00 PM PSTCALL (800) 336-2225 to Join the Conversation!

Newsom is threatening to call in the U.S. Department of Justice against any banks, Wall Street investment firms, bond rating agencies or others who may consider “boycotting” any county or joint powers authority that wants to use eminent domain to acquire mortgages that exceed the market value of homes.

Tuesday September 4, 2012, at 10 AM PT, Martha Montelongo, with John Seiler, Managing Editor at CalWatchDog.com welcome Adam Elmahrek, who, last Tuesday, reported on Police Unions Bullying City Councilmen, in this Voice of OC article.(Ben Boychuk, Associate Editor with City Journal is out this week.)

Update: Wayne Lusvardi will be joining us on Gadfly. He’s got a new piece up at CalWatchDog.com:

Prop 31 is a mixed bag but has more bad than good in it. It would likely divert State funds from suburban cities to big cities with large unfunded pension liabilities that are running budget deficits. It is being oversold as a state budget efficiency measure but it is really a way for the governor to grab more power away from the legislature and work independently with strategic area plan committees to do local projects.

I get it now. We’ll talk with Wayne about this horrific bill! Why are Republicans backing it? What is their spin on it? Do they not get it, or do they not care?

“Members of a handful of Orange County city councils Tuesday told stories of attempts by police unions to bully them into voting for generous labor contracts and said a flood of similar revelations is yet to come.

In a news conference led by Costa Mesa Councilman Jim Righeimer outside Costa Mesa City Hall, two council members from Buena Park and one from Fullerton recalled how their cities’ police associations had a councilman followed, blogged that officers should target cars belonging to council members’ children and bullied women employees at a local coffee shop that posted campaign signs supporting a councilman.

The allegations come just days after Righeimer accused unions of orchestrating a botched attempt to have him arrested for drunk driving.

The common thread, the council members said, was controversial law firm Lackie, Dammeier & McGill, which does labor contract negotiations consulting work for police unions. The law firm had posted on its website a slew of bullying strategies to secure lucrative labor contracts, the Orange County Register reported earlier this month.”

“What you have here is police associations and their law firms hiring private detectives to dig up dirt on elected officials that they can then use to extort them, embarrass them, or worse, in order to get the elected official to vote against the best interests of the city to protect themselves,” Righeimer told me. “That’s the definition of extortion.”

How police play hardball at bargaining table
Tony Saavedra, Register investigative reporter | August 16th, 2012 | O.C. Register
There is a link in this article to the website for the Upland law firm Lackie, Dammeier & McGill, which featured “their play book for twisting arms during impasse negotiations,” but the content on the law firm’s page has been removed, and reads this instead:

“This portion of the material has been removed from the website. What was intended to be informational, historical and educational material has been misconstrued by some as advice on negotiations “tactics.” Accordingly, to avoid the misperception, [they must mean misconception, or then again, maybe not] the information has been removed.”

“…California’s state government had 9.3 percent more employees in 2011 than it did 10 years earlier – closely tracking overall population growth – but its payroll costs had jumped by 42.4 percent, according to a new Census Bureau report.

Needless to say, California residents are not earning 42.4 percent more than they were just prior to 9/11…”

Tuesday, August 7, Retired L.A.P.D. Deputy Chief of Police, Stephen Downing, and Wayne Lusvardi join Martha Montelongo, with John Seiler, Managing Editor at CalWatchDog.com, and Ben Boychuk, Associate Editor with City Journal.
Stephen Downing, Retired Deputy Chief of Police, L.A.P.D. joins us to discuss the issues with Anaheim. Points to consider for redress. How to foster peace officers to serve and protect, and to work with the communities they serve, and not occupy them.

Wayne Lusvardi joins us to talk about the big magic show acts hailing from Sacramento. John Laird, an old life long progressive from Santa Cruz, now a CA State Senator from the region of environmentalist rulers, appears in the middle of a big ruse, a trick to deceive and dissemble to the pubic. What’s the real story behind all the supposedly “hidden funds?”

John Seiler on The Great Rip-Off. Police Chiefs and other municipal administrators who are earning higher salaries retired, than when they were working. They’re earning six figure incomes, and cities have revolving doors of new hires, and new retirees. It’s like a looting taking place in broad daylight, and no one to stop it, because the people the public would expect to serve and protect us are the ones doing the looting.
Tune in LIVE at 10:00 a.m. PDT on CRNtalk.com on CRN 1 or on USTREAM TV’s CRNStudioLive!”

If you tune in on CRN, give the player a few minutes to pop up and start streaming. Give yourself enough time so you don’t miss the program.
Sometimes the programing display for CRN 1 is not current, and it may say another program is playing. You can be sure Gadfly Radio is from 10 am to 11 am PT, Tuesdays! You can count on that!

Theresa Smith says she appreciates support from peaceful protesters in recent weeks, and she wants to ‘do positive things.’… …Jaclyn Conroy, of Anaheim Hills, whose nephew Justin Hertl was shot and killed by police in 2003, said she will continue protesting. She marched with other protesters to Disneyland on Sunday.

“It puts a tear in my eye that people from outside the area have come to support us,” she said. “They’ve helped bring a national spotlight and that allows us here locally to talk to people about the problems we’re having with police.”

In June – a month before the most recent shootings and subsequent protests – three Latino leaders filed suit against the city, demanding changes in city government. Their lawsuit, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, calls for council members to be elected by districts rather than at-large; a change they believe would break up the Anaheim Hills’ political dominance and encourage more people from more neighborhoods to run for office.

One of the leaders who filed suit, Jose Moreno, 42, a trustee of the Anaheim City School District and president of the group Los Amigos, said the city and its Police Department have work to do to improve relations with Latinos.

“Police don’t do their work in a vacuum,” he said. “For them to rebuild relationships in our communities, we need to feel like part of the political system – like we are sharing in the resources of this city.

“In the same way, kids don’t decide to join gangs in a vacuum. Those city resources aren’t coming to us.”

‘AFRAID TO COME OUT’ Police estimate that 2,500 documented gang members claim turf in Anaheim. They belong to some 35 active gangs – all, police say, are Latino except for one African American gang.

By comparison, the police force arrayed against them is overwhelmingly white. The department has 363 officers; 82 are Hispanic and 249 are white. [ Ethnic make up of the police aside–the City Council can be responsible for police practices, policies and community relations.]

The relationship between Anaheim’s police force and its Latino communities has long been strained.

Unfortunately, in my view, the city’s Police Department has embraced the wrong kind of policing methods — ones that are unkind and tend to undermine people’s freedom. I don’t see police officials there using their brains to handle a situation resulting, in part, from overly aggressive policing tactics and insufficient police accountability and transparency.

Clearly, the cultural changes the mayor is trying to implement in the city bureaucracy need to filter into the police department — a point Tait also makes.

Tuesday June 12, on Gadfly Radio, Wayne Lusvardi joins Martha and John Seiler,managing editor of CalWatchDog, to discuss the election results of the pension reform initiatives in San Diego, and San Jose, the failed recall of Scott Walker in Wisconsin, the victorious recall of three sitting city council members and the election of their replacements, in Fullerton, CA, a spectacular story. and some of the hot and contentious candidate races that developed in last week’s CA Primary Election.

Ben Boychuk, Associate Editor with City Journalis away, on assignment.

June 6, 2012 By Wayne Lusvardi A pension reform ballot proposition was passed by the voters in the city of San Diego by a margin of 66.2 percent in favor to 33.8 percent opposed.. A similar pension reform measure in the city of San Jose is lead…

There is a simple, humane and practical solution to Illinois’s threatening insolvency: the “Lauzen Plan.” If tried successfully and emulated it promises to staunch the red ink threatening the viability of many states and municipalities. Lauzen is leaving the state Senate, after 20 years of service there, where he, together with other legislators of integrity, consistently predicted, and tirelessly formulated solutions to, the cascading fiscal catastrophe now manifesting. The officials blithely ignored or aborted the solutions.

My personal message to Travis Kiger, newly elected City Council member of the City of Fullerton: “Congratulations. I am thrilled with your victory, and the team you are part of. You’re awesome and inspiring. I thank all of you, and you individually.” and “I want to congratulate you on such a marvelous fantastic thrilling victory. I have followed from before Kelly Thomas, and you had a stage set already. You were able to catch that wave and ride it like champions!
Bravo. I love it.”

A pension reform ballot proposition was passed by the voters in the city of San Diego by a margin of 66.2 percent in favor to 33.8 percent opposed.. A similar pension reform measure in the city of San Jose is leading with 89.8 percent of the vote in favor with 37.7 percent of the vote counted.

Tuesday, April 24, on Gadfly Radio, ‎Al Ramirez, Republican, candidate for U.S. Senate in CA joins us to talk about his unique candidacy, and story. Wayne Lusvardi, regular contributor at CalWatchDog.com join Martha Montelongo, John Seiler, managing Editor at CalWatchDog.com, and Ben Boychuk, Associate Editor with City Journal on CRNtalk.com, CRN1. Tune in LIVE at 10:00 a.m. PDT on CRNtalk.com or on USTREAM TV’s CRNStudioLive!”

Wayne Lusvardi has a new article published at CalWatchDog in which he responds to Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute who believes California is doomed due to dysfunctional Hispanic families who are trapped in downward social mobility. His article is not a rebuttal but a rejoinder -an expansion of her topic, in “California’s Demographic Revolution.”

Relaed Link:
Are Hispanics moving up or down the social scale?
Commentary
April 24, 2012
By Wayne Lusvardi
The ongoing economic malaise of the past half decade has slammed most social and economic groups in California. How are Hispanics doing here, especially in light of the bursting of the Housing Bubble?
For example, consider Riverside County, which according to the 2010 U.S. Census is 46 percent Hispanic. Housing prices therehave dropped 30 percent. Worse, construction work, a mainstay of Hispanic family income, has crashed 70 percent.
This matter was considered recently in the City Journal by Heather Mac Donald in her article, “California’s Demographic Revolution.” She wrote that, “unless Hispanics’ upward mobility improves, the state risks becoming more polarized economically and more reliant on a large government safety net.”
But she (click here to read the whole of Wayne Lusvardi’s article).

This is the fifth in a CalWatchDog.com Special Series of 12 in-depth articles on municipal bankruptcy.
April 11, 2012

By Wayne Lusvardi

“…If the courts rule that existing pension plans are constitutionally protected and unchangeable, then we are likely looking at formal bankruptcy for many local governments.

With the basics of municipal finance explained, let’s look at the fiscal — or budgetary — situation that California cities and counties find themselves in today.
City and County Budgets on the Verge of Upset…”

Many California cities are under fiscal stress due to the protracted contraction of the economy. Many of those cities will be staring down bankruptcy waves as public pension obligations start kicking in during the coming years.

Climate activist Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute of water policy in Oakland may face criminal charges that he deceptively obtained data from a conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute, then “doctored” it and disseminated it on the web to libel that organization. Gleick has admitted he is the source of the leaked data but denies he produced the doctored document.

We’ll also talk with Wayne about his article posted Monday, Municipal Bankruptcy Stalks Stockton, a case study in why is it not a good idea for public sector officials to play Real Estate Developer? How bad can it be? I wouldn’t want to be the cat holding the bag when the value of properties has dropped over two thirds since 2007!

We’ll talk with Ben on the latest developments with the Parent Trigger and a new scandal perpetrated by the Teacher’s Union against the parents at Desert Trails School, what’s new at City Journal CA and his take on Lance Izumi’s new book, “Obama’s Education Takeover.”

We’ll take your calls, questions and comments on the air at 1-818-602-4929, on FB instant chat or Twitter. I am a stand for liberty, integrity, empowerment, and prosperity for all people; a stand for vibrant and innovative small businesses that create jobs, that in the process of prospering, nurture and support creative and dynamic culture, in the work place, and in our personal lives. Thank you for supporting our program, by listening, sponsoring, and or sharing this post with others. It’s a pleasure to share this program with CalWatchDog’s team of government policy watch dogs and the great investigative work they produce! Tuesday’s live, on CRNtalk.com. California, the land of beauty and unlimited possibility because of the abundance of our greatest capital resource, our human resources, if we can get it right. Join us.

We’re stillbuilding our website here at GadflyRadio.com, but it’s not quite done yet. As soon as we’ve got it all running smooth, we’ll let everyone know and resume posting our podcasts of our shows, here and on iTunes, including today’s show, and from February 14.

Climate activist Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute of water policy in Oakland may face criminal charges that he deceptively obtained data from a conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute, then “doctored” it and disseminated it on the web to libel that organization. Gleick has admitted he is the source of the leaked data but denies he produced the doctored document.

We’ll also talk with Wayne about his article posted Monday, Municipal Bankruptcy Stalks Stockton, a case study in why is it not a good idea for public sector officials to play Real Estate Developer? How bad can it be? I wouldn’t want to be the cat holding the bag when the value of properties has dropped over two thirds since 2007!

We’ll talk with Ben on the latest developments with the Parent Trigger and a new scandal perpetrated by the Teacher’s Union against the parents at Desert Trails School, what’s new at City Journal CA and his take on Lance Izumi’s new book, “Obama’s Education Takeover.”

We’ll take your calls, questions and comments on the air at 1-818-602-4929, on FB instant chat or Twitter. I am a stand for liberty, integrity, empowerment, and prosperity for all people; a stand for vibrant and innovative small businesses that create jobs, that in the process of prospering, nurture and support creative and dynamic culture, in the work place, and in our personal lives. Thank you for supporting our program, by listening, sponsoring, and or sharing this post with others. It’s a pleasure to share this program with CalWatchDog’s team of government policy watch dogs and the great investigative work they produce! Tuesday’s live, on CRNtalk.com. California, the land of beauty and unlimited possibility because of the abundance of our greatest capital resource, our human resources, if we can get it right. Join us.

We’re building a website at GadflyRadio.com, but it’s not quite done yet. As soon as we’ve got it all running smooth, we’ll let everyone know and resume posting the podcasts to our shows, on our website at GadflyRadio.com and on iTunes, including today’s show, and from February 14.

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The status quo of education in the U.S. is destructive to our Nation, and to ignore this truth is to be numb, unconscious or in denial of reality.

"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament."--A Nation At Risk - April 1983

Drug War Clock for Current Year

Police arrested an estimated 858,408 persons for cannabis violations in 2009. Of those charged with cannabis violations, approximately 89 percent were charged with possession only.
Source: Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation Your tax dollars at work--but for whom?

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Dedicated to considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness… "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth." --Plato on Socrates